Delay is urged in health reform

Updated 11:12 pm, Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Sen. Tommy Williams says Texas should see how the federal reform works.

Sen. Tommy Williams says Texas should see how the federal reform works.

Delay is urged in health reform

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AUSTIN — As the working poor pushed to make their voices heard in the health care debate and advocates highlighted the importance of the issue for the growing Latino population, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Tommy Williams said Tuesday that Texas should wait more than two years before a potential expansion of coverage — to see how the federal reform law works.

Williams, R-The Woodlands, reiterated that he opposes expanding the current Medicaid program, as allowed under the federal health care law.

Like other Republicans, including Gov. Rick Perry, Williams calls it an unsustainable system that must be overhauled.

But Williams also is among GOP leaders lofting ideas for a Texas-style health care plan.

In a Tuesday interview, Williams put forward a new idea that would be linked to new insurance marketplaces called exchanges.

The federal health care law provides for people up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level who find insurance through exchanges to qualify for subsidies to help them buy policies.

Texas under Perry has refused to set up an insurance exchange, so the federal government will set it up instead.

Besides the benefit of insuring more Texans, the exchange will mean more money for state coffers because insurers pay a premium tax on policies sold.

Williams said the money from the extra premium taxes could be used to pay for Texas' cost of expanding health care coverage to those who would otherwise qualify for Medicaid expansion.

His preference would be to add them to the insurance exchange and help them to buy coverage, although he said it also could be done by putting them in a revised Medicaid program.

He would like to wait until September 2015. That would give lawmakers another regular legislative session in 2015 to examine the program.

“And so I don't want us to get committed to any program that we can't pay for and that the federal government is not going to pay for,” Williams said.

As GOP leaders looked at the cost of covering more people, others looked at the cost of leaving things as they are.

Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, hosted a news conference call about the effect of Medicaid expansion for Latinos. The call highlighted a Kaiser Family Foundation study saying 38 percent of Texas Hispanics are uninsured, and 58 percent of those uninsured people have incomes that would allow them to qualify for Medicaid if it were expanded.

George B. Hernández Jr., president and chief executive officer of University Health System in San Antonio, said on the call that it would save $54 million in its indigent-care program if Medicaid were expanded and people moved to that program.

Otherwise, he said, “We will be paying for this in the billions of dollars in the years to come.”

The Texas Organizing Project, which advocates for issues affecting low- and moderate-income families, brought advocates and senators together at the Capitol to announce its campaign to canvass San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, and Rio Grande Valley to identify working Texans who would qualify for health-care expansion and make their voices heard.

Seve Rex Lara, 28, of Pharr, said he can't afford health insurance although he works three part-time jobs — for the University of Texas-Pan American athletic department, a local baseball team and with an energy broker. He said his story is not uncommon in the Rio Grande Valley.

“God has given me good health as far as I am concerned, because I have not seen a doctor in over 10 years...,” said Lara, a community leader with the project. “I live in constant fear that I am one medical bill away from having a lifetime of debt.”